How To Build Differentiation with Promotion

The Relationship Between Differentiation and Promotion

Your brand’s Differentiation shows its uniqueness in market versus other products and services. To drive your brand’s Differentiation through Promotion you need to look not only at your brand but also the category your brand operates in and how your competitors behave. You should be trying to enter white spaces with your proposition, then flexing that during times your brand is promoting. 

To drive your brand’s Differentiation through Promotion there are a few things you should consider: 

1. What can I say that’s unique? When you run a promotion, it is often accompanied by surrounding display units, whether they’re in-store materials or online banners and signage. Using those surrounding materials to educate your brand’s unique selling point helps consumers understand how your brand is different than others out there in a simple and straightforward way. 

2. How can I differentiate my product experience? Going on deal means your volume sales will naturally go up and more of your product will be in more people’s hands. With more usage occasions up and coming, you better be sure that your product provides something for the user that is positively different and will encourage them to try you again – even at full price! 

3. How can you stay current? Competition comes and goes and so do people’s perception of what is unique. Keeping current with trends in the marketplace and understanding the claims and communications of your competitors are things you must do to ensure that when you promote you are differentiated from the others each and every time.  

What should you do next?

• Determine what it is that you can say about your brand that no other brand can. Aim to promote that message across your promotional display units. 
• Run an audit of category and competitive claims to see what other brands in your space are doing to differentiate. With that knowledge, plan your own claims roadmap to look at what you can say now, what you’d like to say next, and what you’d eventually like to claim in the future. This will help give you a forward-looking plan for maintaining your differentiation. 
• Optimize the product experience to be in line with your brand’s individuality. What can you say at shelf, on display, or online that will carve out that clear white space for your brand, that only your brand can fill? How does that message get delivered through your product experience? Your brand’s Differentiation through Promotion must stretch end to end – from point of purchase through to product or service usage. 

How to determine if it’s working.

• When running a promotion, you’ll know the key timings for your brand, whether it’s a simple week on/week off cycle or a longer promotional campaign. Keep an eye on your brand’s Differentiation over these spans of time to ensure it is growing, and that you have supporting materials surrounding your promotion to flex your brand’s uniqueness.  

• Keep an eye on your competitors too, as they could begin innovating or entering into the white space you have captured. When they make moves, this could equally impact your Differentiation. 
    
  
  Guidance from:
  Michael Coden | Head of Marketing, ProQuo AI
  
  Michael has spent 10 years developing and building brands across the US, Europe and Australasia for global companies.